Learn English Fast – Is This Happening to YOU?
In case you missed it, I highly recommend you check out the first blog in the how to learn English fast series.
I was talking about how important it is to develop a “sense of urgency” and make learning English a MUST! I read the comments and can see that most people agree. Great! I’m glad it helped.
BUT… We’re not done yet. Not even close!
Here’s another thing about us crazy humans. We’re very emotional. (And surprisingly, it’s not only women who are emotional either, just kidding ladies…)
In this blog post, when I talk about “emotional” I’m not talking about what we usually think of as emotional. I’m not talking about people crying or acting with no logic just because they are emotional. I’m talking about emotions like determination and passion. Those emotions are easy to experience but hard to KEEP… Think about it.
As I talked about in the last post, it’s really easy to make learning English only a “SHOULD” and not a “MUST”. When that happens, we keep saying we’ll do it “tomorrow” or “later”. Then weeks, months, and years go by with little or no improvement. This one little thing makes a HUGE difference. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Let’s face it, we’re human.
When you read the last blog, I’m guessing you probably agreed with a lot of what it said.
I’m also guessing though, that while many of you agreed with what you read, you got excited for learning English for a little bit, and STILL did nothing or almost nothing. Maybe you studied that same day, but your habit of promising to learn everyday is already finished. Am I even close to right? Honestly…
What happened? Did your opinion change? NO WAY!
Life happened. The phone rang, your boss said something, your mom said something, you “needed” to watch your favourite TV show, the dog needed food… whatever.
Something happened to take you back into your regular life. So much happens to all of us everyday in our lives. It’s SOOOOOOO easy to get excited for a minute or 2, make a promise to yourself, and then STILL NOT do it. Then a few days or weeks go by and we almost forgot the promise entirely.
It’s easy to read about why it makes sense to make learning English a MUST, but it’s even easier to go back to your regular life without making a REAL change. If you studied for 1 or 2 days because of the blog, that’s great, but that’s not the REAL change we’re talking about here.
One reason that long term change is difficult is because we are unfortunately pretty clever (often in a bad way). It’s hard to trick ourselves to believe something that we know isn’t really true. It’s hard to wake up an hour early when we set an alarm clock. We still know we don’t HAVE to wake up then. We can press snooze; a lot of times! We usually wake up when we absolutely need to. It has little to do with how tired we are. If your house was on fire, you would run out of the house with a lot of energy, even if you were in the middle of an amazing sleep and super tired.
Let’s be honest, you know you won’t die if you don’t study English today. Deep down, you know it’s not really a MUST. You understand it’s still very important, but it’s not even close to as “urgent” as the feeing you’d get if you had to save your life from a fire.
The emotional feeling to NEED to study English isn’t even as strong as wanting to eat something when you are only a little bit hungry. Even the desire to watch TV or eat junk food can be much stronger than the desire to study English. We know it’s not a good idea, but we still feel the desire to do it NOW because we’ll get some pleasure NOW.
If you spend all day learning English, your brain knows that your life probably will not be totally different tomorrow. And that thinking IS the problem. It makes sense, but it will kill your dreams.
Our brains are focussed on getting immediate results. We are like little children who want results now. Simply understanding that something, like learning English, is good for us isn’t enough. We need to focus on it EVERYDAY. We need to really focus on exactly WHY it is a benefit, or we will probably just stop doing it and go back to a life of “shoulds” and excuses.
Today’s exercise is simple: (Don’t do it later or you will forget! I’m not kidding. Do it RIGHT NOW!)
1. Take out a piece of paper and write down 5 ways that better English will improve your life.
2. Put that paper near your bed and read it every morning when you wake up and every evening before you sleep. Trust me, even doing this little thing is harder than you think. It will only take 60 seconds a day, but doing it EVERY morning and EVERY evening will be difficult. Try it and see for yourself.
Some reasons I’m talking about are things like:
Learning English will help me get a better job.
The better job will earn me more money to travel the world.
It will help me buy something nice for my parents, boyfriend/girlfriend, send my kids to a better school (Even if you don’t have kids YET) The earlier you plan for the future, the better, OBVIOUSLY!
Help me get into a good university.
Help me travel the world and make friends or find love…..
You can think of your own personal reasons, but make sure you write down 5 on a piece of paper and make sure you look at that paper every morning and every evening. NO EXCUSES!
Now just for fun, write a comment below now if you plan to do this (even share your 5 reasons if you want; that would be great actually). THEN write a comment here, one week later, and tell us if you actually DID this.
Please don’t lie (you are only tricking yourself)
Please don’t be lazy (you are only hurting yourself)
Please share your study experiences with the group and let us know if this paper with 5 tips actually helped you remember to study everyday and helped you stop your natural excuses. I’d love to see if you guys can do this for even 1 week, everyday.
Even if you did it only 40% of the time, please share your experiences! I really hope this helps and I think it will.
And just one more friendly reminder; the VIP section is getting WAAAAY better and the price is going to increase soon, but don’t worry, the VIP room will be BETTER THAN EVER. You can see for yourself.
Add and I are buying some new “secret” equipment for some “secretly awesome stuff for VIP). We are going to pick it up this afternoon. Super excited! Just thought I’d let you know…
Love to hear your comments and read your success (or failure) stories! GOOD LUCK THIS WEEK!
March 6th, 2013 at 5:37 am
Last night I promosed myself to take English more seriously but actually nothing change in my life today. You are damn right! U have to feel the sense of Urgence! For heads up here are why I Must improve my English:
1. I can communicate much better and be comfortable around people.
2. I can make friends easier and keep them and enjoy talking to them even on the phone!
3. I can get admision to a better university for studying PhD.
4. I can be a good speaker and give great lectures when Im presenting my work.
5. I can talk in english to my future baby and teach him/ her English as a native
March 6th, 2013 at 5:40 am
Thanks so much for sharing Maribel. That’s awesome!
Can’t wait to hear how things went 7 days from now!
March 6th, 2013 at 6:18 am
Hello dude.When I saw This massage I thought is better for first time I make a great decision for my self. This massage is like Jesus Christ massage that HE said to people in bible;or other messenger how has said to us.But it is for learning language ,that’s so great .Let me tell you about my personal experience for learning English. When i did not know English I had always fail for anything,I remember i decided to learn guitar electric metal style I got to a teacher he was an awful person for teaching.i did not learn even on thing.After that I said to my self you must learn English for toward your dream ,guess what ?I learn guitar by original teacher from America and Europe,my life become changed .I gonna be successful by English language as I am.I read original book saw original movie chat with native speaker with American accent I fell more power fuel than i use to .Thank you guys more power on your elbow ,with your aid I can be success. God made you for success not
failure. God never made anyone to be a
failure.Let Go And Let God
March 6th, 2013 at 6:33 am
I have recently started learning English.I have started learning English with videos http://youtu.be/cu_aijvijnE learning English with videos helps to learn English fast and easy.
March 6th, 2013 at 7:51 am
Hi And and Add! I just joined this VIP programe last night.
Now I’m really looking forward to see your “SECRET”.
And Here’s something I would like to learn. Can I suggest something?
I totally agree that learning slangs is really great and faster way to be a better English speaker,
but I think It’s also good way to learn some phrasal verbs and collocations
that you native speakers often use in your real daily life.
The more I study English,
The more I feel some limits of my English because of the phrasal verb.
Most of the time when I watch English movies or TV shows,
I’m having a hard time to get meaning of some phrasal verbs
because sometimes it has very different meaning from what I’ve usually known.
In my mother togue, we don’t have any preposition
so we use totally different word whenever we describe or say somthing.
But I know In English there are tons of phrasal verbs.
Sometimes I really have no idea which is really important,
What specific situation you native speakers use that word and
why you use that word with those meaning.
So I think it would be great
if you guys teach me some phrasal verbs very commonly used at this moment.
Anyway, I’m a big fan of you guys!
I promise I’ll be one of the enthusiastic supporter of you.
I’m going to go to listen your podcast!
Thank you.
March 6th, 2013 at 8:59 am
Hi YuJin!
That’s awesome. Thanks for the great comment. I’m sure you’ll LOVE the VIP.
How about this idea? Please write down all the phrasal verb questions you would like to know about and send me a list. You can email us privately in the contact section of this site. We’ll make an awesome course about phrasal verbs for you. We’ll then put some of it in the VIP section for the members, and MAYBE even make an extra course that will sell somewhere else, BUT no matter what, we’ll give it to you 100% free just for telling us what you want to learn. I can easily find lists of phrasal verbs all over the internet, but it would be MUCH better for you to slowly make a list of 50-100 phrasal verb type questions that you personally have. We’ll be sure to make something that helps you on all of your questions and certainly give you for free if what you send is good. (I’m sure it will be, your writing seems very good!)
Thanks again YuJin. (Of course you don’t have to do this, but I think it would be a real win/win if you did. It would kind of be a real personalized program)
If anyone else has any suggestions, please share them here as well.
Love to hear your thoughts. Thanks!
March 6th, 2013 at 9:07 am
thanks for your advices!!!!
March 6th, 2013 at 10:30 am
Hi And and Add! Very interesting topic, Andy. reason for doing something is always to have deep meanings. I want to start by saying that I learn English for 2 years and a half and my desire to study further increases with time. Why ? Good question! BECAUSE I SEE MY PROGRESS.Now I do not need a machine to translate, I understand everything in this blog and read it quickly. But during these years had almost not day I do not teach English. My 5 things are simple if you have to put it. 1. love to travel . 2 to communicate with different people. 3. and if I make some money from it is good. That is all. I want to share a story from my life and then said why. One day, a long time ago i was driving back to my house from work and i stopped to pick up a person a man who was hitchhiking. He seemed nice, so picked him up and gave him a ride,and we started talking. And i asked him what, he was doing,he said he was studing to be a doktor. And looked him and he seemed to be about 48-45 years old, and i said well..you are going to be,you`ll probably be sixty years old when you get to be a doktor. He said Yeah,but i`m going to be sixty years old anyway. I might as well be a doctor when i`m sixty.
I am currently 40 years old and I think there are no limits to anything if you want it.
Nothing gives freely if you want to succeed in something, then not fight for it!
Patience and belief in yourself, that’s the way to success.
Hey Andy what are your five things ?
March 7th, 2013 at 1:04 am
My 5 ways that better English will improve my life.
1. I’ll be able to speak fluently
2. I’ll be able to understand movies 100%
3. I’ll be able to understand songs 100%
4. I’ll get a job that I need.
5. I’ll feel better to myself
March 7th, 2013 at 1:22 am
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March 7th, 2013 at 8:46 am
Thanks for all the responses guys!
Keep them coming! I can’t respond to all, but your answers will help you stick to your promises for learning, AND they help Add and I make better lessons because we know more about you guys. It really helps a lot.
March 7th, 2013 at 1:38 pm
I promise myself to study English for 5 important reasons. 1. To become fluent and effective speaker. 2. To excel in my job and better opportunities in the near future. 3. To feel confident. 4. To be able to go around the world. 5. To be happy and meet more people😊
March 7th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Thank you Add and Andi for you kind concern and keeping up with our learning process. I can’t thank you enough. I hope some day my language is good enough to describe your work in a decent way.
cheers
your student
March 7th, 2013 at 9:38 pm
Hi Guys, I’m one of those guys who doesn’t need any encouragement. I mean, I just do it without pushing myself into it. I know it’s really important and I MUST do it whether I have time or not. I’m a totally strict person and am always hard on myself. I do everyday something, listening to you guys, watching TV shows, reading loud books and articles. I have four hours of private English classes every week and on top of it I have to talk English 24/7 which is the best way to go. Anyway, I just wanted to suggest something to you. Can you do some quizzes and grammar? Especially Third conditions and wishes. I have noticed that a lot of native speakers have problems with conditions. I would really appreciate if you will make any of my suggestions.
Thank you guys, you are the best !!!
Paul
March 8th, 2013 at 5:52 am
Hi guys!!! Here my five reasons how better English will improve my life
1. Make friends and enjoy any conversation with them.
2. Get a better job.
3. Have a better social life.
4. Visit places without being scared.
5. Feeling better myself.
March 8th, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Hello everybody, and you special ones ¡¡
English and me are lovers, hopefully devoted to eaach other. There’s no comintment betwen us. When a certain time went by since our first date we decided obligaation references were avoided. Thats what my dear love tells everyday : stand by me¡¡, love me for ever ¡¡¡ Yes I will ¡¡ . Sometimes good things take longer.
Thank you guys, good point again¡¡
March 9th, 2013 at 2:59 am
Hi guys,
Do you remember me? I told you guys that I am gonna go to Australia and now I am here in Sydney. It is now about 2 weeks that I am living here. I did so many stuffs within this two week. Enrolling at university, opening an account, and lob lob lob….! If my memory serves me correctly, I have followed your programs for about one year and today and just few minutes ago, I joined VIP program and I am a small member of your VIP group. I downloaded all the stuffs and after writing this comment, I am gonna go to put it in my mobile and listen to it every day.
Thanks mates (in Australia instead of saying “buddy”, they say “mate”)…
Keep going….
March 9th, 2013 at 8:30 am
Hello everybody!
My five reasons to study English:
1) I will be able to express my thoughts easily and precisely.
Let me consider just one example. I like to write book reviews, and I used to do it regularly using my native language. But in the last few years I have been reading books mainly in English. It would be wonderful to have ability to express my reader’s experience in good English too.
2) I will be more productive at work and in everyday life.
3) I will be able to talk with people all around the world without a risk of being considered dumb.
Not that I’m thinking so much about it. But it’s a shame when you know the answer to some question and still aren’t able to find appropriate words to form your answer.
4) Good English skill will help me to explore our world and learn something new.
I love to learn English. It is so much fun! Nevertheless my learning schedule must be improved by balancing different kinds of activities.
5) I will be able to earn more money in future.
Andy and Add, thank you very much! Your VIP section is really good! I have worked out 18 of your VIP lessons and I really feel progress!!!
March 9th, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Hi!
I found an energy-saving way of learning english on the basis of your topic: every evening after hard working day i write five strong reason that interfering with learning today, and i do it in english
little compromise with my lazy nature
March 9th, 2013 at 7:31 pm
Dear
Hi.Thank you for your recommend .I will do it and a week later.I will write about the result. I hope this suggestion help me learn English better.
March 12th, 2013 at 5:32 am
Hi Andy and Add!
You are amzing men. Thank you for blog and site – very useful.
I think that in additon to “sense of urgency” we must have a plan which helps to organize our free time for study. I try do that:)
My five ways:
1. I can communicate with more amount of people around the world
2. I can creat more effective projects and earn more money
3. I can give the best education to my kids
4. I can improve my life conditions
5. I can choose more places for holidays
Best regard mates!
March 12th, 2013 at 10:26 pm
This post is Great! I am currently feeling as the guy said. I am choosing tomorrow..later..
Oh awfully thanks..I am going to start today!
March 13th, 2013 at 12:10 pm
[...] We already spoke about the need to make learning a MUST, and also the need to maintain your motivation by figuring out the WHY. [...]
March 15th, 2013 at 1:37 pm
hey,guys,I must admit you cut the point,you are amazing,AAAAAAbsolutely.
here are my five reasons to keep learning:share with you.
1 English enables me to understand English-speaking culture better,and broaden my horizen
2 English abilities give me a competitive edge
3 Good English also enables me to travel the world with few language barriers
4 English can help me catach the opportunities of better employment in the future
5 English is one of the most beautiful languages in this world
Andy and Add, thank you so much,I am considering your vip section,all of your courses are raally so cool.I am deeply fascinated.
March 27th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Hi,guys.I would like to ask something about this method that you teach.I realize that the method is good, but the problem is that could I use it in a school.For example, firstly for me it is important to have good marks either,say, to pass English exams such as IELTS. Will this method be a great tool to pass IELTS,to have great marks? In the school we do all this stuff such as listening,reading,writing,speaking.So, if I will just listen to your podcasts everyday,will I improve my English at all sides.I think,you get my question.Please respond.